New 7805 Owner and a Few Questions/Help

Just bought the machine used here on the forums. It is a very nice looking machine and looks better in person than I had expected!

I spent the last several hours reading almost every post I could find on here, but had a few questions I was hoping those with experience could help me out with.

First off, Vista HP 64, the Bios has been updated to the .17, video driver updated to 186.81 by original owner and everything else is stock. It is at the native resolution of 1920x1200

First question is it appears prior owner must have wiped a lot of stuff prior to sending to me. When I boot up, I get an error message that says "main executable error, shutting down program. It does not tell me what the program is. I can close out of it and everything seems to work ok, but it is very annoying. I don't see anything special in the startup list per windows defender. Any ideas what I can do to eliminate this error? Is this some kind of registry error from the prior deletions and if so is there an easy/good/free program to fix it?

Second, the video card seems to lock up after a few minutes of light game play. It is not overclocked or anything and not overheating. The fans kick on and air is just warm out of it. Nothing crazy, just a little Lords of the Ring Online on medium settings. I have updated the driver, nothing. I used the instructions in the pinned thread to remove the driver (using driver sweep per instructions) and reinstalled with the standard issue Gateway drivers, nothing. I have also noticed that the internet explorer screens are not refreshing correctly. The words will spill over into the text boxes and graphics areas. I do not get the blue screen or anything, just locks up the screen and every once in a while I get the message that the the graphics system has recovered itself from an error. Any thoughts on what I am doing wrong or ideas to fix it?

Is the solution to just wipe the entire system and start over from scratch? I don't want to waste a day doing it if it is not going to fix the issues.

I appreciate any help you might be able to offer and apologize if these are simple questions. I did not see the answers in my scan of the posts and I am not an expert by any means.

 

Well, looks like I solved the graphics problem, just need some help in trying to get rid of the main executable issue.

The graphics card had a default profile the kept reloading at boot that was way overclocked. Restored it back to default on boot up and no issues at all so far. No lockup, no crazy looking webpages, and no resets.

 

Well, lots of views, but no help.....

I went for the clean install of Windows 7 Pro and it went smooth. No issues what so ever and everything works perfectly.

 

I don't overclock because the system is outstanding stock. Lots of people seem to think pushing it harder is a good thing. I think you will be really happy that you set it back to stock clocks on the GPU.

Do you know what the process is called that you are ending task on? If so you could look for it by going into msconfig.
click start and type in the run or search field msconfig.
This should load up a program that has tabs. You don't want to change much here but there is a tab all the way to the right that has the check box programs that load on boot. If you can find which one is causing the issue you can simply take the check out and it will ask you to reboot. Those checkboxes will allow you to control what loads on startup.

No reason to wipe it yet. Post back more information and I will try to help.

 

I forgot to delete that profile when I cleaned the computer. It was overclocked when I used to play NWN2 (which ran perfect at those clocks). Since it only uses those clocks in a 3D Application, I never bothered to downclock it (it should be 200/120 on Desktop).

 

Everything is great now. I just needed to do some basic housekeeping like I probably should have done to start out with.

Default graphics is perfect for what I use if for.

Xarthos.
I already did the wipe and very happy. Windows 7 Pro upgrade is fantastic and no errors, everything went perfect. I dont even have the mic issue others are having.

Citizen, you sold me a great laptop, no complaints, I just needed some help adjusting it to me.